The door clicked open, and with that, I stepped inside.

It smelled awful. It was a mixture of old furniture and molded meatloaf. It was like someone took a shit and didn’t flush properly. My eyes scan around the room, scattered about were papers, old sneakers, scrap electronics, and even a broken television. All the cushions to the couches were ripped off, they laid on the opposite side of the room as if someone had thrown them. Sunrays glowed through the broken blinds that hung from the window. The sight of it looked like someone, or something, went on a blind rampage, and nothing was here to stop it.

I let out a sigh, I guess this is one of those things to expect when you’re gone for however long.

“Nothing I can do about it now,” I say aloud to hear my voice, just to confirm that I’m not, in fact, dreaming.

My feet began to carry me past what used to be the living area, I made my way down the hall of what used to be my own. Old paintings filled the walls. As I looked at each one of them, a story managed to form within my head. Old memories, I guess I could call them. I hadn’t the simplest clue of what they were about either, just figments and pictures without any context.

I stopped, my eyes caught the sight of a particular image. A woman, and as beautiful as she was in her stunning red dress, she was also mysterious. Should I have a feeling about the way she seemed familiar to me, as if she reminded me of someone else?

I gazed a bit deeper onto the flat surface. Her bold posture held herself upright as her entire body looked perfect within frame. Mental images began to form, I’ve seen her before, but where?

My wristwatch began to beep, my attention cut to the alarm as I pulled up my sleeve turn it off. Three in the afternoon, it read. I’d be best if I hurried this up.

I continue down the hallway, my hands rub my temples to ease a headache I didn’t know I had.

A breeze gusted from ahead. To the right, an empty doorframe lead to the kitchen. I stopped to observe the inside, pots and pans filled the sink, and beside them was something far unrecognizable. Little white hairs covered it as a mushroom grew out of the side of the mold. Fucking disgusting, I thought as I shut my nostrils to block off the smell.

On the ground laid broken glass beside a rock. The window looked clean of any strong remnants of glass, it told the story of how a thief must’ve broken in and ransacked the place.

I continued down the hall to open another door. With a king sized bed and some images, this must've been the master bedroom. In contrary to the rest of the small apartment, it smelled pleasant. It was like someone doused the entire room in air freshener just yesterday. I looked at the images, unsurprisingly these were all photographs rather than paintings. A large majority of them featured the woman from the painting. Instead of just posing, she surrounded herself with others.

Images of blurred out figures began to set motion within my head. It fought against the constant headache that plagued my mind, only for it to dull the senses of how bad it hurt. Where did I see all these people before? I must’ve known them all previously. My eyes glanced once more back onto the woman, why did I feel as if I had some connection with her?

I look around the room for other pictures and spot one on the nightstand next to the king size bed. Two people stood next to each other, both in what looked like formal attire. The woman stood next to a man, and he...

The man was me.

The blurred figures began to take shape, each individual I remembered had a name for them. I look back at the collage of images, this picture was when I took my friends out for that dinner party, and that was when my kid graduated. The image on the nightstand was when I married my wife.

But wait, where exactly is my wife right now?

That was when an iron dropped inside my stomach. My memory of her lifted, and I had known exactly what happened to her... my wife...

She's dead.